Exit?

The best to be said of Korea was that the worst had not happened. The U.S. forces threatened with annihilation a fortnight ago had not been destroyed, and were not likely to be destroyed. Lieut. General Walton H. Walker's rapid withdrawal of the Eighth Army saved most of it; the fighting retreat of the X Corps in the northeast saved most of that command, too (see below).

Despite uncountable acts of individual and group heroism, the morale of the surviving U.S. troops had been severely shaken by the knowledge that all their shiny weapons and equipment, their sensational blitz tactics, their mountain of supplies, their tanks, trucks, artillery and air power could not hold back a horde that moved on foot, without air support, without armor and with hardly any weapon larger than a mortar. The American fighting man had moved a long way from the revolutionary rabble of 1775; he had become, in a manner of speaking, the British Redcoat of 1950--confident of superiority and aware of the power of a great nation behind him, but unable to cope with ragged characters firing from ambush.

U.S. and U.N. prestige had been sorely crippled in Korea, and this week all evidence pointed to a secret high-level decision that Korea was no place to repair it. It was noteworthy that the Eighth Army made no effort to throw a defense line across the peninsula; Eighth Army spokesmen denied any commitment to defend Seoul; and heavy equipment was being loaded rapidly onto ships at Inchon. If Korea were in fact abandoned, it could be done without abandoning the policy of punishing aggression. Mao's China could be effectively punished elsewhere--for example, by blockade and bombardment of the China coast, and bombing of Manchurian industry.

The policy of containment was dead. There remained only the policy of retaliation and positive action by the U.S. and its allies to damage Communist power at the sources from which aggression flowed.

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